The document discusses several theories related to media studies:
1. Marxist theories were commonly used in media studies from the 1960s-1980s in Europe and emphasized the role of mass media in maintaining the status quo.
2. Critical theory examines and critiques society and culture from a Marxist perspective, drawing on various social sciences.
3. Technological determinism argues that a society's technology drives social and cultural changes, though some theorists believe culture also shapes technology use.
The document discusses several theories related to media studies:
1. Marxist theories were commonly used in media studies from the 1960s-1980s in Europe and emphasized the role of mass media in maintaining the status quo.
2. Critical theory examines and critiques society and culture from a Marxist perspective, drawing on various social sciences.
3. Technological determinism argues that a society's technology drives social and cultural changes, though some theorists believe culture also shapes technology use.
The document discusses several theories related to media studies:
1. Marxist theories were commonly used in media studies from the 1960s-1980s in Europe and emphasized the role of mass media in maintaining the status quo.
2. Critical theory examines and critiques society and culture from a Marxist perspective, drawing on various social sciences.
3. Technological determinism argues that a society's technology drives social and cultural changes, though some theorists believe culture also shapes technology use.
The document discusses several theories related to media studies:
1. Marxist theories were commonly used in media studies from the 1960s-1980s in Europe and emphasized the role of mass media in maintaining the status quo.
2. Critical theory examines and critiques society and culture from a Marxist perspective, drawing on various social sciences.
3. Technological determinism argues that a society's technology drives social and cultural changes, though some theorists believe culture also shapes technology use.
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MEDIA STUDIES
In Britain and Europe, neo-Marxist approaches were common amongst
media theorists from the late '60s until around the early '80s, and Marxist influences, though less dominant, remain widespread.
So it is important to be aware of key Marxist concepts in analyzing the mass media.
Marxist theorists tend to emphasize the role of the mass media in the reproduction of the status quo, in contrast to liberal pluralists who emphasize the role of the media in promoting freedom of speech.
The rise of neo-Marxism in social science represented in part a reaction against 'functionalist' models of society.
A central feature of Marxist theory is the 'materialist' stance that social being determines consciousness.
. According to this stance, ideological positions are a function of class positions, and the dominant ideology in society is the ideology of its dominant class.
In fundamentalist Marxism, ideology is 'false consciousness', which results from the emulation of the dominant ideology by those whose interests it does not reflect.
Another Marxist theorist of ideology, Valentin Volosinov, has been influential in British cultural studies.
Volosinov argued that a theory of ideology which grants the purely abstract concept of consciousness an existence prior to the material forms in which it is organized could only be metaphysical. POLITICALECONOMICTHEORY According to this theory the mass media are a part of the economic system which in its turn influenced by the political dispensation in vogue.
It is apparent that the content the media carry to the masses must be in tune with the beliefs of their two masters-their owners and politicians who help them earn the moolah.
The theory advocates that scientific research should be carried out to focus on how the media are influenced by economic considerations which are not just a few. The theory sees mass media tools as a means to earn money by selling their products.
In a capitalist society the mass media will be employed by moneybags as investment tools just as they use other things in the same way.
critical theory in literary studies is ultimately a form of hermeneutics,
i.e. knowledge via interpretation to understand the meaning of human texts and symbolic expressionsincluding the interpretation of texts which are themselves implicitly or explicitly the interpretation of other texts.
this perspective, much literary critical theory, since it is focused on interpretation and explanation rather than on social transformation, would be regarded as positivistic or traditional rather than critical theory in the Kantian or Marxian sense.
Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. In the sociological context, critical theory refers to a style of Marxist theory with a tendency to engage with non-Marxist influences
Critical theory was first defined by Max Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School of sociology in his 1937
Core concepts are: 1. ) That critical social theory should be directed at the totality of society in its historical specificity (i.e. how it came to be configured at a specific point in time) 2. That critical theory should improve understanding of society by integrating all the major social sciences, including geography, economics, sociology, history, political science, anthropology, and psychology
Culture theory is the branch of
anthropology and semiotics (not to be confused with cultural sociology or cultural studies) that seeks to define the heuristic concept of culture in operational and/or scientific terms.
According to many theories that have gained wide acceptance among anthropologists, culture exhibits the way that humans interpret their biology and their environment.
According to many theories that have gained wide acceptance among anthropologists, culture exhibits the way that humans interpret their biology and their environment.
Technology, Arthur attempts to articulate a theory of change that considers that existing technologies (or material culture) are combined in unique ways that lead to novel new technologies. Behind that novel combination is a purposeful effort arising in human motivation. THEFRANKFURTSCHOOL The Frankfurt School (German: Frankfurter Schule) refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main. Frankfurt School theorists spoke with a common paradigm in mind, thus sharing the same assumptions and being preoccupied with similar questions. The school's main figures sought to learn from and synthesize the works of such varied thinkers as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Weber and Lukas.
Following Marx, they were concerned by the conditions which allowed for social change and the establishment of rational institutions.
It should be noted that the term "Frankfurt School" arose informally to describe the thinkers affiliated or merely associated with the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research; it is not the title of any specific position or institution per se, and few of these theorists used the term themselves. TECHNOLOGICALDETERMINISM Technological determinism is a reductionist theory that presumes that a society's technology drives the development of its social structure and cultural values. The term is believed to have been coined by Thorstein Veblen (18571929), an American sociologist. The most radical technological determinist in America in the twentieth century was most likely Clarence Ayres who was a follower of Thorstein Veblen and John Dewey. William Ogburn was also known for his radical technological determinism.
The term is believed to have been coined by Thorstein Veblen (18571929), an American. Veblen's contemporary, popular historian Charles Beard
Most interpretations of technological determinism share two general ideas:
othat the development of technology itself follows a predictable, traceable path largely beyond cultural or political influence, and
oThat technology in turn has "effects" on societies that are inherent, rather than socially conditioned or produced because that society organizes itself to support and further develop a technology once it has been introduced.
Technological determinism has been defined as an approach that identifies technology, or technological advances, as the central causal element in processes of social change (Croteau and Hoynes).
Rather than acknowledging that a society or culture interacts with and even shapes the technologies that are used, a technological determinist view holds that "the uses made of technology are largely determined by the structure of the technology itself, that is, that its functions follow from its form" (Neil Postman).
. As Postman maintains
The printing press, the computer, and television are not therefore simply machines which convey information.
They are metaphors through which we conceptualize reality in one way or another.
They will classify the world for us, sequence it, frame it, enlarge it, reduce it, argue a case for what it is like. Through these media metaphors, we do not see the world as it is.
We see it as our coding systems are. Such is the power of the form of information.
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